Within Sherry Turkle’s Who am we? She discussed the case study of Stewart, a socially awkward Physics graduate in America who has developed a strong social anxiety. He has had problems with his heart since his childhood and, as a result of living a live “on a small compass” (Who am we? Page 5), he has very few friends, his life revolving around work. However, the identity he created for himself on a MUD was the complete antithesis to this, a confident character named Achelles who had lots of friends and was successful with women.
Whilst this could again be seen as experimenting with different identities, I would argue that in the case of Stewart it was more of an escape. He admits that his online persona was too removed from his offline self for him to be able to apply any of it to his real life, and the improvements were too exaggerated for him to achieve in his awkward, shy offline life. This leads me to the conclusion that whilst experimenting with different selves can has positive effects, as you are able to “test” personalities to see if they work and then apply these to your offline life, this is not the case 100% of the time. In the case of Stewart it is hard to see any benefits that this online MUD had created for him as to me he seems to have spend an awful lot of time creating a rich identity online, which has offered him few benefits when he could’ve spent this time more productively trying to overcome his social anxiety in real life.
rincy
ReplyDelete(I have referred to this in reponse to one of my blogs you commented on) :)
I think it's a bit worrying to think of cases like this and then consider that a lot of younger childeren are now growing up and socialising online from a very young age. Do you think this could lead to things like social anxiety as the result of a lack of socialising IRL?
ReplyDeleteI definately think that this could lead to a serious social anxiety. Whilst nowadays being able to create a good rapport with someone through online mediums is becoming increasingly important, I would never think that it's anywhere near as important as being able to create and maintain relationships with people IRL.
ReplyDeleteI think it could become a bit of a downwards spiral, if you continuously interact exclusively online, your IRL social skills are going to decline, and then the more negative RL interactions you have, and the more positive online interactions you have, it could easily lead to someone believing that interacting online is the only way they feel comofrtable communicating with people and it could be a difficult situation to climb out of.
Nice thread!
ReplyDeleteI think the case of Stewart illustrates many of the problems Turkle and other early theorists have for us nowadays. He clearly isn't an average kind of a guy is he? He has a need which might otherwise require counselling or even therapy?
To base one's notions of the effects of online communications onthe experience of people such as he would be a big mistake wouldn't it? (A bit like psychoanalysis basing it's notion of how we all work on a handful of mental patients? Incidentally, Turkle is a psychoanalyst -as well as a sociology professor.) ;-)